within the parapet. The interiors of our churches were enriched at this
time with much elaborate decoration. Richly carved woodwork in screens,
rood-lofts, pulpits, and pews, sculptured sedilia and a noble reredos,
and much exuberance of decorative imagery and panel-work, adorned our
churches at this time, much of which was obliterated or destroyed by
spoliators of the Reformation period, the iconoclastic Puritans of the
seventeenth century, or the "restorers" of the nineteenth. However, we
may be thankful that so much remains to the present day of the work of
our great English church-builders, while we endeavour to trace the
history of each church written in stone, and to appreciate these relics
of antiquity which most of our villages possess.




CHAPTER X

NORMAN VILLAGES AND THE _DOMESDAY BOOK_

The coming of the Normans--_Domesday Book_--Its objects--Its contents--
Barkham in _Domesday_--Saxon families--Saxons who retained their
estates--Despoiled landowners--Village officers and artisans--
Villeins--_Bordarii_--_Cottarii_--_Servi_--Socmen--Presbyter--Names
of Normans--The teaching of _Domesday_.


There was a great stir in our English villages when the news was brought
to them that William of Normandy had landed in England, and intended to
fight for the English Crown. News travelled very slowly in those days.
First the villeins and the cottiers who were not fighting with their